“Retweets” and “Favorites”: Why?

Have you ever paused to think about why you retweet 140 characters on Twitter?

Why do you choose a tweet to favorite? What does a retweet really mean? Does this reaction to the tweet benefit you or your professional learning network? Maybe both…but nevertheless, it’s important identify and understand why we make this digital response.

There are several reasons why others retweet and favorite those 140 character microblogs – from sharing information quickly and building a network of followers to saying thanks or endorsing an idea. For most, it’s a virtual affirmation that a piece of information is interesting, funny, or relevant to your world. Personally, I use these features to bookmark meaningful articles and information, and contribute to my digital filing cabinet. In the process utilizing my retweets and favorites as the virtual storage of amazing ideas, I realized that I have to be intentional about revisiting, learning from, and reflecting on each of the 140 characters. Currently, I have countless of favorites and retweets that have meant very little without reflection — which in the moment of clicking one of these digital responses, it was worthy enough to remember and revisit for a later day. How can I be more purposeful with my retweets and favorites?

After a bit of reflection and desire to change the status quo of my “retweets” and “favorites”, there are a few steps that will help me retweet and favorite tweets with purpose:

Strategically utilize the favorite/retweet feature with the intention of revisiting and reviewing tweets in the future.

Each month, I will reflect on and blog about my top 5 retweets and/or favorites in order to share my learning. This purposeful reflection deepens my understanding and promotes application of the most important tweets saved.

I am excited about the opportunity to not only continue to curate information that is relevant to my learning, but also evoking purposeful reflection of the 140 character microblogs that I believe are the most meaningful.